November 2016 – Craig & Arline's circle the U.S. trip

When we initially started to plan our trip, one of our goals was to see some friends along the way. One such individual was St. Elizabeth. Arline met her when she was the

sis-elizabeth-small — Sister Elizabeth Scully

Director of RCIA at St. Catherine’s in Riverside in the late eighties and went through a three year journey to become Catholic. Sister worked in our SoCal area till approximately 15 years ago, and moved back to the Mother House located in sister-arline-small Aston, Pa. She suffered a stroke last year, and moved to the Assissi House for rehabilitation and decided to stay there rather than move back to the big house. She took us on a tour of the main house, which

elizabeths-church-small — Church at the Mother House

included the church and all of it was abosolutely gorgeous, and went to lunch and had a very nice afternoon. She is very well taken care of by the sisters and staff . She is currently 94 years old. .

Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, the Liberty Bell and the Cheesesteak Sandwhich. We visited the Liberty Bell, ate the

Cheesesteak Sandwhich and felt the brotherly love, well, sort of. Most of the major sites of historical interest are located in a four city block area, so it was easy to visit them in a day. Philadelphia is the core of our independence movement, and more than just seeing buildings and museums, actually being in the same liberty-bell-small place that 240+ years , Franklin, Washington, Adams and other historic greats were walking around talking of revolt, freedom independence-hall-small and what that freedom would look like. We saw the foundation of the house where Washington and Jefferson lived when the federal government was in Philadelphia before there was a White House in Washington D.C. The foundation is a visable excavation site surrounded by plexiglass, not far from the visitors center. We were able to see the room in Carpenters Hall where the first Continental Congress met

carpenters-hall-small — Site of first Continental Congress

and first discussed independence and Congress Hall where the Senate and House of Represtatives met during the first years of the Republic. And, the grave of Ben Franklin at Christ Church Cemetery.

A couple of observations…the Liberty Bell is smaller than I thought and is not “cracked” but in an attempt to repair the bell, they created a “gap” about 1/2″ wide. The replica of Independance Hall at Knott’s Berry Farm is right on.

Here are some of the interesting spots we visited…